Lunch @UCSF with Katherine Pollard – Microbe-aware precision medicine

Lunch @UCSF with Katherine Pollard – Microbe-aware precision medicine

A major goal of precision medicine is to optimize a patient’s treatment based on genetics. But we are only able to test a tiny percentage of one’s genes: the human ones. Genes from bacteria and other microbes—collectively known as the human microbiome—influence health in complex ways, from producing anti-inflammatory compounds to inactivating drugs. This raises the enticing hypothesis that our microbial genes hold answers to biomedical problems that we cannot solve by studying human cells alone. An expert in the field, Katie Pollard will discuss the challenges and recent discoveries in microbiome science and their application to medicine.